Rain Rain Go Away

Hey Everyone,

Man we are getting so slack at keeping you up to date! Hopefully this blog will fill in most of the gaps!
We have been doing so many things, even though we have been trying to save lately as we have recently found out that the new changes to the visa we need to apply for to remain in the UK for up to three years requires us to come home to NZ to apply! Whilst it will be really great to come home to NZ, it is such a pain, as we could have spent the money we will now have to spend on coming home going somewhere we haven’t been before! However, we really can’t wait to go home and see our families, Jessy kitty and friends :o)

We fly home on the 28th Sept, and will be home at least a month.

So this is what we have been up to anyway:

Leeds castle
The day our kiwi friends headed off to Spain, we decided to do something a bit more exciting ourselves, so we headed out to Leeds Castle – a castle that we had been meaning to visit for ages. It was a really great day out, (except the argument that we had had with the train ticket booth lady about whether we could go out to Leeds castle that day or not – turns out we knew what we were talking about!). Anyway, we got to Leeds castle just in time for the Falconry display which was fantastic to watch. Leeds castle is the first castle we have been to with a moat (and although not very exciting inside the castle as it is all restored), the grounds are fantastic, and it was a great chance to escape busy London for a quiet, peaceful and quaint village in Kent (South East of London). We really cherish these days when we can get out of London, as you feel yourself totally relax!

Jam at Leeds Castle

The falconry display at Leeds Castle

We went to the Phantom of the Opera with a group of friends - however I was quite disappointed by this show - definitely my least favourite show that we have been to. I don't quite know why I found it so disappointing - perhaps it was our seats (quite far away) or just the story line of the show. Anyway we enjoyed a good night out afterwards so that was good.

Ben and Jerrys
Some of you may not know, but Ben and Jerry’s is a delicious ice cream brand made in America, however I think it does pretty well here in England too. As it was their 30 birthday, they decided to hold a festival, which our kiwi friends invited us to, with a great twist – all you can eat Ben and Jerry’s ice cream!! We went in with an excellent tactic – eat the ice cream but throw away the cone so that you can eat more ice cream, except Bev was quite taken with the taste of the cones too……..haha.
Lets just say we won’t be eating Ben and Jerry’s ice cream for awhile – it is a lot richer and creamier than tiptop. The day was an extraordinarily hot day – so perfect for eating icecream, and they had some great British bands playing too. I even got sunburnt - shock horror!

Bev getting Hen pecked at the Ben and Jerry's festival! (they weren't very happy when he told them he was eating a chicken sandwich!)

Greenwich
Bev and I decided to check out Greenwich before church a couple of weekends ago. It was really cool, investigating a new area of London, walking through a tunnel that goes under the Thames, and trying tasty food at the Greenwich markets. However the highlight of my day was mocking Bev because he keeps referring to Greenwich as Green Witch, and then he was talking about this thing called the Cutty Shark that he had no idea about – until I told him it was the Cutty Sark and it was a ship! Haha. Unfortunately, we ran out of time so we didn't get to see the Maritime museum but we will have to go back and see this another time.

Bev in the tunnel under the Thames River

Greenwich looking towards Canary Wharf (where Bev works)

A cute squirrel - I watched it pick this muffin wrapper out of a rubbish bin and then cleverley eat all of the crumbs off it (far more sophisticated than Steve Harcourt eating the whole thing)

Bev’s Birthday
For Bev’s birthday last week, after a refreshingly lazy sleep in, I surprised him with a trip to the British Wildlife Centre which was about an hour out of London (it is surprising how many places you can find within an hours train ride of London). I thought our plans might have been thwarted by bad weather, however it stayed fine for all bar 2mins of our day out so that was great. The wildlife centre was really cool, it had British wildlife – just as the name suggests! So we got to see foxes up close, a badger, owls, polecats, otters, stoats and weasels (its hard to appreciate these since they are such mongrels in NZ).

We also got to finally see a red squirrel – so cute and ginger! (they have been displaced largely by the american grey squirell) But it was so sad we almost wish we hadn’t – as they were showing terrible repeat behaviours (it sux to be an animal behaviourist sometimes!). We then came home and quickly got ready to go out for dinner with a bunch of friends at a posh thai restaurant overlooking the Thames in Putney – very nice!

Eastbourne camping
This weekend we enjoyed two nights camping in Eastbourne (1.5hrs train trip from London South East) with Bev’s cousin and fiancée. It was so nice to get out of London and go somewhere different. We were quite worried about the weather as it was forecast for heavy showers(have you noticed that this is a theme of this blog), but it was fine during the day, and only rained at night. This was fine as we had borrowed a tent from Bev’s workmate, and it had an excellent fly on it – so no soggy camping! YAY! We were deeply disappointed though, as my workmate had told me they had sand at the beach we were staying at, but no, just more awful pebbles! However it was so nice to just chill, go out for a yummy breakfast, investigate our new surroundings, and walk down to an airshow that was on. As soon as we got to Eastbourne we just totally relaxed – ahhh.

Randon tidbits:

London has the grossest largest slugs ever – seem to be quite a few around at the moment ewww!
You have to look at it twice to see whether it is a dog poo or a slug – that’s how big they are! No wonder their wildlife do so well over here!

I don’t recommend being in a country that is not your own when an Olympics is on – because all you hear about is how wonderful the country you are in thinks they are! Grrrr, especially when your own country has no medals for the first week of the Olympics! You won’t believe how much crap I got about that! However, my faithful American friend greeted me enthusiatically this morning to inform me that we had five medals!

I have worked out why the Brits are always so pasty white – summer doesn’t exist in the UK –so far we may have had a month of nice weather(made up of a few days in early may, a few in july and that’s about it!) – The rest have been grey overcast days and rain. Don’t come here if you want a summer!


Anyway that's about all our news - we hope to see heaps of you when we are home in NZ!

Will try to do at least one more blog before we head home.......only 6 weeks to go! (and counting)


Lots of Love
Jam and Bev

In the Summertime.....

Hi all,

It’s been a while! Summer is well and truly here. We’ve have some fantastic British summer days and some not so fantastic British cloudy drizzly days. We have been so insanely busy! But that’s how it is over here in summer, being out and about with so many things to do, and being invited to so many things too…have got to cut down on spending!

I have been busy sport wise; I’ve been loving the cricket and hockey 7’s in England. There is something pleasant about being in England and playing Cricket, it’s nice to get away from the crowds and going to a beautiful open park with well established trees and bush and spend some time in the sun chasing a ball around. We have also been hauling ourselves out of bed too early (by our standards) to watch the All Blacks’ play on Saturday mornings…well worth it when we win though!

The week after we were in Berlin, we have had my parents come over for 2 weeks (start of June). They arrive tired with barely any sleep on the flight, and also arrived with a full suitcase of chips and biscuits from NZ! Hong Kong customs questioned why they were taking so much food towards the UK. It was interesting to see my parents’ initial reactions to life in London. They initially said that they could not believe how green the place was and how many brick houses there were here. We ended up going to Chinatown for dinner on the day they arrived, because my uncle arrived on the same day to visit his mate in Manchester. However, it was rush hour when we headed back after dinner. The look on dads face was classic when a guy squeezed into the tube next to him…I’m guessing he didn’t believe anyone could fit into that space! They had to learn quickly to hop on and off the tube very quickly too, else they would have been at the next tube stop on their own without realising it!

This gave us a chance to see more of London ourselves too. They got to see the usual London sights: Buckingham palace, Big Ben/Westminster, a ride on the London Eye, Tower of London, Hampton court, Thames boat ride, and we attempted to show them some vege markets….but we were horribly late and got lost. Their favourite place was Chinatown, where they hung out most of the time!

Bev's parents outside Westminster - Big Ben in the background

At Hampton Court with a dressed up lady

We then took them to Paris for a long weekend, because we wanted to show them that in a small amount of distance, there is a huge difference in Western cultures here, ie. Food, lifestyle, and language. We also wanted to show them another country too, as they had come such a long way. We took them to the usual tourist places including Eiffel tower, Notre Dame, Sacre Coeur, a French perfume shop, a boat ride on the Seine, Arc De Triomphe, and the Latin Quarter for dinner. We tried to convince them that French food was really top notch, but it was not to their tastes, a lot of the food was too creamy.

Us all at the bottom of the Eiffel Tower

Behind the shoulder of the portrait artist, drawing Bev's dad (sitting in background left of photo)

We ended up tiring them with massive walks to see sights, something that Jam and I have gotten use to. But we did have one relaxing morning in Montmarte in a courtyard of portrait artists. We soaked up the relaxing atmosphere, and while Jam and I got caricatures, Mum and Dad got a portrait done. Afterwards we enjoyed delicious crepes and an ice cream. Mum and Dad thought Paris was really beautiful, and enjoyed some of the quirky French characters. However, they did not enjoy Gypsies.

When we arrived back into London, my parents went up to visit my uncle in Manchester. When they got there, they discovered that the Chinatown was not as good as London, so they came back earlier. Overall, it was nice to have them here and show them a bit of our life in London.

Two weeks after my parents left, myself and a group of guys and gals form my hockey club went to Lille for a Hockey tournament, in France. All I got to say is: what goes on tour stays on tour, and that’s all I got to say about it…..nah, kidding. We were an invitational team of 29 teams - 27 were French, 1 Belgium team, and we were the only “English” team – and me, the only Southern Hemisphere person of the lot. A friend in our club in London is a French guy who belongs to a club in Lille, who organised us to go to his French club for the tournament. This was pretty exciting going on tour to another country, especially of one of a different language. It was a great laugh for both myself and the French people I bumped into because of the language barrier and we both were a novelty to each other. Personally it was the best trip I’d ever been on. There is something really fun about turning up to a foreign speaking country, playing your favourite sport, enjoying the atmosphere of the music and sun, a bit of dress up, and really teaming up to stick it to the foreigners! Lille was a bit different to Paris, it was hard to find someone who spoke English.

Tarzan with his modern day axe

Wimbledon
On a perfect Tuesday evening during the annual Wimbledon tennis tournament, we decided to check out what the excitement was all about. We headed in after work to get cheap tickets to watch a game on court 1. We enjoyed watching the quaint etiquette of the ball handlers and pomp and ceremony of the umpires. It was a fantastic afternoon to bask in the late sun, and enjoy a very Posh British event of strawberries and cream, and Pimms. It was very amusing that every steward/ticket person/souvenir shop worker/food outlet person had a very proper posh accent. We found this very amusing because Wimbledon is only 5 minutes down the road, and we found a population of posh people pretty much next door. We found it so convenient to travel to the event down the road, because it’s probably the only place/event we’ve managed to commute to that was well below the 45minute average mark.

Strawberries and cream whilst watching Wimbledon Tennis

A few weeks on, some more kiwi mates arrived to stay with us for a week. They had been doing Turkey, Italy and Greece for the last 3 months and were here to kick off his UK visa. Their introduction to the UK was quite funny: firstly the Monopoly pub crawl the day after they arrived. And 2ndly experience of what happens when you make eye contact with tube commuters – big butch dude says to his bull dog “what’s that guy staring at!?”. The pub crawl was organised by the TNT magazine, Kiwi/Aussie/Saffa (short for Sth Africa) travel magazine. We went around 10 pubs located on the British Monopoly board. Our kiwi mates and us dressed up as cops and robbers, and a dice. We were quite disappointed that not many others got dressed up and that we didn’t get any photos of us in the magazine! But it was a great day out. With a bit of kiwi ingenuity in my costume, I was mistaken many times for a real police officer! Haha, I think I missed my calling! I made a stack of go to jail cards, to which Jam had heaps of fun handing out, especially when we walked through a market, bumping into a guy selling pirated DVDs! Jam handed him a go to jail card, which he accepted surprisingly gracefully! LOL!

A force to be reckoned with!

We’ve had a few good BBQs since the weather has warmed up, learning the difficult art of coal BBQs! It’s a horrible memory of how much of a contrast winter is every time I spot my coat hanging on the back of the door (it’s so thick it can stand up by itself!), and how we had to armour up in gloves and a warm hat!

It’s also been nice waking up at 5 (every second week I have to do an early shift for my job) with full day light and still having light right up to 10pm…..WOOOHOO! An extra few hours of light to play with. You really enjoy going out to the parks in the evening….I never thought I’d enjoy going to a park so much before! But it’s because of the well established trees that make it, and also the open green spaces are a contrast to the concrete jungle we live in. Although we have posted on our blog for so long, the amount of daylight is starting to fade. It was at its peak at the end of June, but is still the middle of summer. We’ve been for a couple of walks to explore the greater Putney area and now have discovered how swanky Putney really is! We discovered Auckland waterfront like bars and restaurants in the area….and wow!

So as you can see we've been pretty busy! Will try and get our next blog out soon!
Lots of love
Bev and Jam